Sisters and brothers, I think you’ve probably heard this maxim before. It’s what parents used to teach their children to say when teased by their friends. Words will never hurt me. A very brave statement to make, don’t you think? It seems to imply that words don’t matter very much. And yet, we all know, from experience, the power that words have over us. Anyone who’s ever opened a rejection letter, for example, turning down their application for a much needed job, or to a much sought after school, will know the power of words to sadden and to disappoint us.

And words can do much worse than that. Some of us will remember, for example, the tragic story of Amanda Todd, the 15 year-old Canadian girl, who took her own life just a couple of months ago, after being cruelly bullied on Facebook. Or perhaps some of us may know first hand what it feels like to be a victim of character assassination. Having others gossip about us. Or spread rumours concerning us. Whether true or not. Demolishing our reputations or even our careers in the process. Clearly, not only can words disappoint, they can also destroy.

And those are just the more obvious effects. There are also more subtle but no less dangerous ones. Not only can words disappoint and destroy, they can also deceive and seduce. Mislead and confuse. How many of us, for example, can deny being continually enticed by cunning advertisers into buying things that we do not really need? And on a regular basis? How many of us can say that we have not been led to believe, by society at large, that our worth as persons depends mainly upon the highs and lows of our successes and failures. Upon the make of car that we drive, or the district in which we live. Upon the kind of work we do, or the company we keep. Upon the school to which we send our kids, or the grades those same kids obtain. How many of us can claim to be unaffected by the words that may pop into our minds from time to time, telling us we’re worthless. Or just not good enough. Discouraging us from persevering in whatever worthwhile thing we may be trying to do.

Sisters and brothers, whether we care to admit it or not, words do have power over us. Power to disappoint and to destroy. To seduce and to mislead. To discourage and to depress. But if this is true, what becomes of our beloved maxim then? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Are parents expecting too much from their children when they teach them to say this? Is it just a matter of wishful thinking? Of putting up a brave front. If words are indeed so powerful, how can we expect not to be hurt by them?

And yet, perhaps the maxim doesn’t really mean that words do not have power over us. They do. Obviously. But rather, as powerful as words may be, perhaps it remains possible for us to tune them out. The way people tune a radio, for example. Or switch channels on a TV set. We can tune out the hurtful and misleading words by tuning in to healing and nurturing ones. Isn’t this how parents can help to protect their children from the cruel and confusing words of others? By constantly speaking loving and nurturing words themselves. Words of guidance and of truth. And words that are not just being spoken, but also constantly being translated into action. Into quality time spent with the child, for example. And into close attention being paid to its needs and concerns. Such that, held secure in their parents’ unconditional love and acceptance, the child is better able to disregard whatever hurtful things others may say about it.

Isn’t this also what our God, our divine Parent does for us? Isn’t this what we celebrate at Christmas? The wonderful mystery of our heavenly Father speaking to us in a remarkably new and compelling way. Reminding us of how much we are loved and cherished. Showing us the way to true happiness. As the second reading tells us: At various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son. His Son Jesus, who, the gospel tells us, is also the eternal Word of God. At Christmas, we celebrate how this same Word of God becomes translated into terms that we can better experience and understand. Into a living breathing human person, whom we can see and touch. The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory.

But that’s not all. As the Word of God comes among us, he also brings much power. The power to save us from our enemies. From the hurtful and misleading words that threaten to lead us astray. In the first reading, this salvation comes in the form of the joyful news that God is fighting on behalf of his people. For the Lord is consoling his people, redeeming Jerusalem. The Lord bares his holy arm in the sight of all the nations. And this should not be surprising. For this is what the Word of God is all about. As the gospel tells us, the Word of God is both light and life. He enlightens all people. Shows them the way to true happiness. And to those who receive his message, those who accept him into their hearts and into their lives, the Word gives power to become children of God. Power to live life to the full.

Isn’t this what Christmas is really about? It is about a loving Father continuing to speak his Word to his children. His Word of Love and Light and Life. And even translating this Word into a human person, able to lay down his life for his friends. Helping them to protect themselves against the effects of other words. Dangerous words. Words that seduce and discourage and destroy.

Sisters and brothers, perhaps it is true that while sticks and stones may break our bones, words will never hurt us. But only provided we learn to tune out these same words of danger and tune in to the Word of God made flesh for us. The Word whose coming we celebrate at Christmas.

Sisters and brothers, which channel are you tuned into? Whose words are you listening to today?

2 comments:

Indeed, words would have power over us if and when we -empower the spoken words.

Somehow, for me - i tend to focus on the hurtful and destructive words which i had accumulated for many years...- especially painful words from those who are hurting in themselves...

yes,it's only now that i can see that i had been focussing on the wrong side/perspective...that i had failed to see myself in GODS LIGHT!

As 2013 draws near,i pray for the grace to be more positive and to be more sensitive for others -and to learn to accept myself as God loves and accepts me

As i grow in this deep awareness about God's abiding presence within me - and when i let this truth sinks into me, as i allow GOD PRESENT in HIS WORD to touch and heal me, - then, i would pray with a grateful heart;

I have to confess that due to one such person in my family, who is always testing our patience with her cold attitude, and refused to cooperate, has made all of us loose our anger. Harsh words were being hurled, yet she still maintained a cool or nonchalent attitude.

I believe that words, if use/hurled wrongly will be the greatest hurt to receive on anyone. So, from now on, knowing that God still loves me, I will turn to his Channel of Love and Peace instead.

My Jesus, My Saviour,Lord there is no one like you,All of my days, I want to praiseThe wonders of Your mighty love.

My comfort, my shelter, Tower of refuge and strength Let every breath, all that I am Never cease to worship You.

Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before evening prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent.

Power in the Breaking

Then they said to one another, 'Did not our hearts burn within us as he... explained the scriptures to us?' They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem... Then they told their story of... how they had recognised him in the breaking of bread. - Luke 24:32-35 (NJB)

Words at liturgy are spoken not simply or primarily for the sake of information. Words are proclaimed at liturgy so that God can do something among us for our sakes and our salvation... The power of the proclaimed word is that it causes something to occur among us. Every time we proclaim the scriptures at liturgy "they are fulfilled in [our] hearing."- Kevin W. Irwin, Models of the Eucharist

When a person is touched by the Word obedience is born, that is a listening that changes life.- Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen #10

(T)he meeting between God and people in liturgy may - and probably should - provoke discomfort. Rituals behave - as Jesus did in his ministry - parabolically, and hence worship is not a self-congratulatory exercise where we showcase "all the great stuff we're doing." The point of our coming together in prayer is not congratulation and comfort but challenge and change. Even when we arrive at the church doors aglow with prosperity and success, we enter only by "acknowledging our failures and asking the Lord for pardon and strength" (Order of Mass, Penitential Rite). We become a community of the forgiven. And when we mourn and lament our loss, at the funeral of a loved one, we still accept the invitation to come before God "with praise and thanksgiving" (Eucharistic Prayer I), and to acknowledge that "all your actions show your mercy and love" (Eucharistic Prayer IV).- Nathan D. Mitchell, Meeting Mystery

In the liturgy, properly celebrated, divisions along lines of sex, age, race or wealth are overcome. In the liturgy, properly celebrated, we discover the sacramentality of the material universe. In the liturgy, properly celebrated, we learn the ceremonies of respect both for one another and for the creation, that allow us to see in people and in material goods, 'fruit of the earth and the work of human hands,' sacraments of that new order which we call the justice of the kingdom of God.- John J. Egan, quoted in Keith F. Pecklers, SJ, Worship: A Primer in Christian Ritual

The future of liturgy is the future of the Church.... Celebrating the liturgy is itself the primordial source of renewal in the Church. We learn the liturgy by celebrating it. The more we succeed in celebrating the liturgy, the more we'll live the Christian life fully and the more we'll succeed in transforming the Church... The great ideals of the Church are in crisis today in part because there's a crisis in the liturgy. The great ideals of ecumenism, of internal reform of the Church, are all connected. The crisis of the liturgy places in crisis these other great values, because the (Second Vatican) Council wanted to confront these challenges of the mission of the Church, of reform, of dialogue with the world, by beginning with the liturgy. If the liturgy is the source and summit, then we foster in the liturgy the kind of life we need to meet these great goals. If these great movements of the Church are in difficulty today, we have to look to the difficulty in the liturgy.

Body for the Breaking

(cc Atilla1000)

(This) is about getting away from a view of the Church that is very seductive and very damaging - and very popular. This is the view that the Church is essentially a lot of people who have something in common called Christian faith and get together to share it with each other and communicate it to other people 'outside'. It looks a harmless enough view at first, but it is a good way from what the New Testament encourages us to think about the Church - which is that the Church is first of all a kind of space cleared by God through Jesus in which people may become what God made them to be (God's sons and daughters), and that what we have to do about the Church is not first to organise it as a society but to inhabit it as a climate or a landscape. It is a place where we can see properly - God, God's creation, ourselves. It is a place or dimension in the universe that is in some way growing towards being the universe itself in restored relation to God. It is a place we are invited to enter, the place occupied by Christ, who is himself the climate and atmosphere of a renewed universe.... But somehow or other, we all have to undergo a fairly fundamental conversion from seeing revealed truth as a possession to be guarded to seeing it as a place to inhabit; not one bit of territory that needs protection, but the whole world renewed. We shall not proclaim Christ effectively if we are constantly reverting to what makes us anxious rather than what makes us grateful. All I have said so far implies that the priest's task is centrally and essentially to proclaim that world renewed - in personal care, in public teaching, in sacramental action. And the point of such proclamation is to tell the assembly of believers who they are in God's presence, what it is to be involved with and in the priestly act of Jesus Christ and what that means in the daily interactions of human life in terms of reconciliation, judgement, risk and gift...- Rowan Williams, The Christian Priest Today (Friday 28 May 2004)

Broken Elsewhere

Jesuit Corner

Our Identity:What is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius was...(General Congregation 32, Decree 2, #1)

Our Mission:Ours is a service of faith and of the radical implications of faith in a world where it is becoming easier to settle for something less than faith and less than justice. We recognize, along with many of our contemporaries, that without faith, without the eye of love, the human world seems too evil for God to be good, for the good God to exist. But faith recognizes that God is acting, through Christ's love and the power of the Holy Spirit, to destroy the structures of sin which afflict the bodies and hearts of his children. Our Jesuit mission touches something fundamental in the human heart: the desire to find God in a world scarred by sin, and then to live by his Gospel in all its implications... We can now say explicitly that our mission of the service of faith and the promotion of justice must be broadened to include, as integral dimensions, proclamation of the Gospel, (inter-religious) dialogue, and the evangelization of culture. They belong together with the service of faith... because they arise out of an attentiveness to what the Risen Christ is doing as he leads the world to the fullness of God's Kingdom...(General Congregation 34, Decree 2, # 11, 20)

Jesuit Spirituality:(W)e can describe Jesuit spirituality by a set of life-giving and creative tensions. Jesuits are to be men of prayer for whom spiritual means are primary, yet they are asked to use all the natural means at their disposal for their apostolic work. They are to be disciplined men purified of inordinate attachment to worldly values, yet actively engaged in the world; they are, indeed, expected to find God in their activity. They are to be distinguished by their poverty, yet able to carry out their apostolic activities among the wealthy as well as among the poor. Jesuits are to be chaste and to be known as chaste, but are expected to be warm and loving companions at home and on the road, that is outside of cloister. They are to be men of passion, intelligence, initiative and creativity, yet responsive in obedience to superiors. They are to be committed to the people and institutions with which they are involved, yet able to move quickly to whatever place superiors send them. They are expected to be men who believe that God's Spirit communicates directly with individuals, including themselves, and thus who are discerning regarding the movements of their hearts, yet also to be men distinguished by disciplined obedience and fidelity to the institutional church... Jesuit spirituality functions best when these tensions are alive and clearly felt, that is, when Jesuits experience in themselves the pulls of both sides of each polarity. Jesuits are at their best, for example, when they are attracted to spending much time in prayer and have to control that attraction for the sake of their apostolic activity, or when Jesuit theologians experience the tension of being faithful Roman Catholics and of searching for new ways to express the truths of faith in a different age and culture...(Barry & Doherty, Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way)

Quotable Quotes:

As long as we remain in the polarization of conservatives and progressives, of left and right, we will paralyze and block apostolic freedom and response. The Spirit is pushing us forward on the way to him who makes all things new, who will build up with us a new earth and a new heaven, the city of God. Instead of looking suspiciously at one another, let us look together to Christ.- Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ

In the document in which we considered our charism, we say that in looking at Jesus we understand who we ought to be. "Remaining" in him. We all know that it is not through guidelines or directives written for others that the Church and the Society will change. They will change if we know how to become new persons.... The Gospel takes us still further. It tells us that everything we have done is for mission.... At the very heart of the sending is the "remaining.".... We are sent because we have entered into Christ and it is Christ who has sent us. The mission has its source... in our encounter with God, but it ends in others. It begins with Christ and it ends with others -- in their joys, in their hopes, in their sufferings...- Adolfo Nicolas, SJ

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By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.- Decree on Obedience, n. 19